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• farmer
  farmer

  noun

  a person who farms; person who operates a farm or cultivates land.
• Farmer
  Farmer

  noun

  Fannie (Merritt) 1857–1915, U.S. authority on cooking.

farmer

¹ American  

[fahr-mer] / ˈfɑr mər /

noun

• farmers
  plural

1. a person who farms; person who operates a farm or cultivates land.

2. Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. an unsophisticated or ignorant person, especially one from a rural area.

3. Archaic. a person who undertakes some service, as the care of children or poor people, at a fixed price.

4. Archaic. a person who undertakes the collection of taxes, duties, etc., paying a fixed sum for the privilege of retaining them.

5. Cards.

   1. a variety of twenty-one played with a 45-card pack, the object being to obtain cards having a total worth of 16.

   2. the dealer in this game.

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Farmer ² American  

[fahr-mer] / ˈfɑr mər /

noun

1. Fannie (Merritt) 1857–1915, U.S. authority on cooking.

2. James (Leonard), 1920–1999, U.S. civil rights leader; founder of CORE.

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farmer ¹ British  

/ ˈfɑːmə /

noun

1. a person who operates or manages a farm

2. a person who obtains the right to collect and retain a tax, rent, etc, or operate a franchise for a specified period on payment of a fee

3. a person who looks after a child for a fixed sum

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Farmer ² British  

/ ˈfɑːmə /

noun

1. John. ?1565–1605, English madrigal composer and organist

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Sensitivity

The word farmer has been used as a derogatory term for an ignorant or unsophisticated person, especially one from a rural area (whether an actual farmer or not), since the 1800's. A couple of citations illustrate this. One early example is found in Artie by George Ade (1896): “I may be a farmer, but it takes better people than you to sling the bull con into me,” uttered by the title character Artie, who is a young office worker and not a farmer. A book review in The Guardian (August 21, 2001) shows a more recent use: “I worked in a couple of those bars where you hustle champagne. They were businessmen, they weren't naive farmers.”

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• underfarmer
  noun
• farmerlike
  adjective
• profarmer
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• farmers
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of farmer

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English fermer, fermour, from Anglo-French, Old French fermier “collector of revenue,” from Medieval Latin firmārius “one who holds lands or tenement for a fixed number of years or for life”; see origin at farm, -er ²

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Explanation

A farmer is a person who runs and works on a farm. Some farmers raise a variety of food crops, while others keep dairy cows and sell their milk. Farmers work in some aspect of agriculture, growing vegetables, grains, or fruit; or raising animals for milk, eggs, or meat. A small farmer manages a relatively small piece of land, often growing different crops and keeping hens for their eggs, for example. Some farmers own their farms, while others rent the land on which they work. In the 14th century, a farmer was "one who collects taxes," from the Old French fermier, "lease holder."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

farmer Farmer farmers

"Democrat, Republican, that didn't matter," said Alisha Lange, a farmer from Piqua, Ohio.

From Barron's ● Nov. 5, 2026

A third farmer named Mohammad, 30, who has converted 80 percent of his land to wheat, told AFP, that the lack of water in recent years has affected crops other than poppy.

From Barron's ● Oct. 29, 2026

For the third generation farmer, it is "absolutely incredible to move from all hand-done to sitting on the phone, watching what's happening outside".

From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2026

Third-generation farmer Sondre Eide keeps his fish in a submerged, sealed facility called Watermoon, roughly the size of 12 Olympic swimming pools.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

Approaching their elder years, with little money saved, Mother and Father wanted to be close to son David, a peppermint farmer.

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

Mulroy is “just going to have to work harder and ensure that people are continuing to stay safe,” Farmer said on the House floor.

From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2026

Sam Farmer makes his picks and score predictions for Week 6 of the NFL season, with the Rams defeating the Cardinals and the Chargers falling to 0-6.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026

Farmer Chandala Sadamma told AFP that when she sees the red-earth scars where her plot of mango and cashew trees once stood, "I feel like crying".

From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026

Farmer Preston Arrington, who has a 2,100-acre farm in Mississippi, told MarketWatch on Tuesday that when he bought a truckload of red-dyed diesel for his farming equipment a month ago, he paid $4.12 a gallon.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026

The evening I met Farmer, I was sitting on a second-story balcony of a military outpost, talking with U.S.

From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French

If successful, this approach could give farmers a much-needed way to protect their crops against an emerging pest that has remained difficult to identify and manage for more than a decade.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 6, 2026

The company supplies strawberries for Driscoll’s, which markets berries grown by independent farmers under contract.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026

Similar shocks hit the world’s farmers as Middle East exports of urea and phosphate fertilizers fell.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026

Hinson, 43, is a former local news reporter who says her journalistic background helps her understand the issues faced by the state's farmers and small businesses.

From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2026

In the Pacific Ocean, the main wave of extinction began in about 1500 BC, when Polynesian farmers settled the Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

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Related Words

• grower
• laborer
• peasant
• producer
• rancher

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